“And there generally weren’t any!” sympathized Helen.

“What flower is it you’re so crazy over?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Sweetpeas, my child.  Never in all my life have I had enough sweetpeas.”

“I’ve had more than enough,” groaned Ethel Brown.  “One summer I stayed a fortnight with Grandmother Emerson and I picked the sweetpeas for her every morning.  She was very particular about having them picked because they blossom better if they’re picked down every day.”

“It must have taken you an awfully long time; she always has rows and rows of them,” said Helen.

“I worked a whole hour in the sun every single day!  If we have acres of sweetpeas we’ll all have to help Roger pick.”

“I’m willing to,” said Ethel Blue.  “I’m like Roger, I think they’re darling; just like butterflies or something with wings.”

“We’ll have to cast our professional eyes into the garden and decide on the best place for the sweetpeas,” said Roger.  “They have to be planted early, you know.  If we plant them just anywhere they’ll be sure to be in the way of something that grows shorter so it will be hidden.”

“Or grows taller and is a color that fights with them.”

“It would be hard to find a color that wasn’t matched by one sweetpea or another.  They seem to be of every combination under the sun.”

“It’s queer, some of the combinations would be perfectly hideous in a dress but they look all right in Nature’s dress.”

“We’ll send for some seedsmen’s catalogues and order a lot.”

“I suppose you don’t care what else goes into the garden?” asked Helen.

“Ladies, I’ll do all the digging you want, and plant any old thing you ask me to, if you’ll just let me have my sweetpeas,” repeated Roger.

“A bargain,” cried all the girls.

“I’ll write for some seed catalogues this afternoon,” said Helen.  “It’s so appropriate, when it’s snowing like this!”

“‘Take time by the fetlock,’ as one of the girls says in ’Little Women,’” laughed Roger.  “If you’ll cast your orbs out of the window you’ll see that it has almost stopped.  Come on out and make a snow man.”

Every one jumped at the idea, even Helen who laid aside her writing until the evening, and there was a great putting on of heavy coats and overshoes and mittens.

CHAPTER II

A SNOW MAN AND SEED CATALOGUES

The snow was of just the right dampness to make snowballs, and a snow man, after all, is just a succession of snowballs, properly placed.  Roger started the one to go at the base by rolling up a ball beside the house and then letting it roll down the bank toward the gate.

“See it gather moss!” he cried.  “It’s just the opposite of a rolling stone, isn’t it?”

When it stopped it was of goodly size and it was standing in the middle of the little front lawn.